Colmar

A former convent turned gallery. The Isenheim altarpiece is here. It was built to open out like shutters, and the panels now stand separated across one room. The museum closes on Tuesdays; on other days the doors open at 9am.

Low houses press against both banks and a flat boat takes a short round trip. The boat sits low, so heads go down under the bridges. Waterside seats cost more, which argues for looking from the bridge instead.

A merchant's house of 1537 with a wooden gallery and an octagonal turret on the corner, its wall paintings setting biblical scenes beside worldly ones.

Carved stone heads crowd the facade. The name came from them. Counts differ depending on who is counting, so the number is not settled.

This was the birthplace of the sculptor who made the Statue of Liberty. A study of it stands in the courtyard. Models show how the hand and the face were made separately to check the scale.

A 12-metre replica stands on a roundabout north of the centre. It went up in 2004, a hundred years after the sculptor's death. It is cast in resin and tinted the colour of weathered copper.

Yellow sandstone sets it apart from other Alsatian churches, and the roof carries glazed tiles. The south tower was rebuilt lower after a fire, which leaves the two sides unequal.

A road links the villages through the vineyards from north to south, with Colmar about halfway. Growers in each village keep the door open for a taste, and nobody has to buy on the way out. Buses make it awkward, so a bicycle or a hired car works better.

A brick and iron market hall of 1865 with one door opening straight onto the water. Stalls of vegetables and cheese are mixed with counters where you eat standing.

The castle stands on a ridge north of Colmar with the whole plain below. It stood as a ruin until the German emperor had it rebuilt in the early 1900s, so the castle today is a restoration. Up there the wind bites even in summer and the road ices in winter.

The old customs house of 1480, its roof patterned in coloured glazed tiles. Envoys of the Decapole, a league of ten Alsatian imperial towns, met in the hall upstairs. Merchants unloaded under the arcade below, and a market still sets up in the square outside.

The church that holds the Madonna of the Rose Bower, painted in 1473 by Colmar's own Martin Schongauer. Birds and roses crowd its gold ground, and the detail grows the closer you stand. Though a church, it charges admission for the painting.

A wine village 7 kilometres south of Colmar, its lanes looping in rings around a central castle and chapel. Pope Leo IX, born here in 1002, stands atop the fountain in the square. The streets curve, so wandering returns you to your starting point.

A village at a valley mouth north-west of Colmar, where the house Albert Schweitzer was born in, in 1875, is now a museum. A fifteen-minute climb through vines reaches the round keep of the ruined castle. A fortified bridge with a small chapel spans the Weiss.

A walled village ringed by vines whose old core escaped war damage almost entirely, keeping its 16th-century houses. The Dolder, the gate tower closing the upper end, dates from 1291. Crowds stick to the main street, so the side lanes stay quiet.

Old farmhouses and workshops, taken down across Alsace, stand again here in an open-air museum. Smiths and bakers work in the old manner. Storks nest on the roofs, and a full round needs half the day.